Recent entries

Maddening March, Issue 03/16

In this month’s issue of Keeping Up With the Erikssons: I get sick, more tattoos, another job, we celebrate Easter and I move on from this month’s challenge to the next.

Life has a habit of moving on, whether you like it or not.

We had promised Amanda that we would keep on living without her though some days that’s a lot harder than I’d like to admit. I miss her a lot.

The last two months have been a blur. Sudden eruptions of emotions appear to originate from nowhere as I start crying hysterically to the ending of the film Furious 7.

I suddenly found myself having a phone conversation where I realised that it wasn’t the end of February—as I had thought—but actually the end of March.

Because life moves on, whether we’re driving or not.

Super duper sick

Spending the first week of March with a serious case of the man flu probably contributed a lot to my temporal confusion.

Lying in bed with a stress induced flu, semi conscious at the best of times I managed to watch every episode of QI before feeling good enough to eat properly again.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to wallow in my own self pity again, the first time around was quite enough but it’s been a while since I’ve been that ill. #JustSaying.

More tattoos

Feeling like my old self again by the weekend after, I wanted to treat myself a little. I wanted to get the distant past out of my mind by immortalising it. So that I could start dealing with the more recent past.

I was surprised by how quickly I got this sketched.

Having already made plans for more tattoos but then cancelled those plans when shit hit the fan last month, I was pretty excited to get to go this month instead.

And because of a conveniently timed cancellation from another customer my tattoo artist, Jamie, was able to see me earlier and could get the previous month’s designs done on the same day.

If you’re curious about the meaning of my three new tattoos as well as all my previous ones, you can read about them in Imaginative Ink, a Tattoo Story, where I talk about all my tattoos at great lengths.

New job

The hunt is over.

I have another job.

After numerous interviews, several of which were with Shopify, I have decided to join the enthusiastic team at Studio 24, an award-winning web design and development agency, in Cambridge.

In my role as an experienced front end developer with a focus on accessibility and inclusive design I will spend time building websites but also establishing company-wide standards for how we will build websites.

This time around, job hunting was an interesting and quite different experience. I learned a few memorable lessons from my sudden shift in focus and priorities which I’m going to talk about next Wednesday.

A heathen Easter

“And on the third day he arose again and he said unto thee, ‘Ooh, I’m well rested, who’s up for a barbecue?’”

“True story, it’s totally in there. In the holy biblí.”

“And that son, is why a bunny shits and hides chocolate eggs in our garden.”

Whoever said parenting was hard was clearly doing it wrong.

Whilst Easter is a holiday that is more important to Rebecka’s than it is to me, it’s still one that I enjoy celebrating.

It brings back memories of dressing up as an Easter hag, begging for candy in the village and painting eggs. None of us dressed up this year but we did do our annual Eriksson egg painting where we try to outdo last year’s self.

Oh Dear!

Lucien on the other hand, who had been looking forward to Easter for about two months when asked about what he enjoyed the most replied, “Worms.”

“Worms. Armageddon.”

Worms Armageddon, originally released in 1999, is a game I remember with fond memories. I used to play it myself when I was younger and have always enjoyed the whimsical and absurd humour it has.

And having played it with some friends in recent years I can attest to that it holds up surprisingly well and even works on Windows 10.

What’s not to love about Worms: Armageddon, arguably the best instalment in the Worms series.

So, because I wanted to do some father and son bonding, I decided to introduced Lucien to Worms Armageddon.

He laughs hysterically whenever any of our worms don’t act according to our plans and instead blow themselves up with e.g., my personal favourite, the holy grenade. Or when they simply stand too far on the edge and fall to their watery grace.

Monthly challenge

Last month’s challenge; Writing every day has been really interesting.

Whilst I’ve obviously not published an entry every day—I never really thought I would either—I have managed to write something almost every day.

Because why not, but mostly because I’ve wanted to include a secondary language to learn with my French. The recommendation is to pick a language closer to something you already know to make the secondary language easier.

And since I’m learning my fourth through my third (French through English) I figured it would be a hell of a lot easier to learn Danish through Swedish—my mother tongue.

Finally, given the choice between Norwegian and Danish, the latter with its guttural sounds just interested me a fraction more.

Which is why the fifth language in going to try to learn will be Danish.

Sorry to all my devoted Norwegian readers. I’ll get around to your language another day.